


When You Grow Up

by Trio Maxwell-Chang (thegreatwordologist)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-29
Updated: 2012-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatwordologist/pseuds/Trio%20Maxwell-Chang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft was five and one quarter the first time someone asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Grow Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Facsimilii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Facsimilii/gifts).



Mycroft was five and one quarter the first time someone asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and Mummy had told him to be on his best behavior for company. What Mummy hadn’t said was that company consisted of his father’s side of the family, including his horrible Aunt Eugenia, who was older than Mummy by quite a lot, with fat fingers and fat lips, and squinty little eyes that had a decidedly vicious gleam to them. He didn’t much care for Aunt Eugenia, but Mycroft was a very good boy, so when she pinched his cheek between her fat finger and her fat thumb, and asked in an overly-flowery voice just what he wanted to be when he grew up, Mycroft answered promptly and clearly. “A doctor, Auntie.” 

Mycroft wasn’t fully clear just what a doctor was, but he knew that Eugenia’s husband, Uncle Lawrence, was a doctor. He stood straight as Eugenia’s face took on a tight, pinched expression and she dropped his cheek, smiling a smile that was a little too much canine teeth and too little warmth. “What a clever boy,” she cooed at him, as his mother approached, and turned away, descending on a group of adults with all the grace of overfed, land-bound piranha. Mycroft kept his face smooth and sweet until her back was to him, and then he smiled, and the cold in his smile was the deepest of winter beside hers.

* * *

When Mycroft was six, Mummy took him on a trip to Aunt Eugenia’s. She tried to explain why they were going, but all Mycroft really understood was that Uncle Lawrence wasn’t going to live there any longer, and that Aunt Eugenia needed a friend to help her. Mycroft, remembering the gift of the sparrow on their front step, from what Mummy always called ‘That Cat’, asked Mummy if Uncle Lawrence was dead. He considered it quite a sensible question, really, and was very serious when he asked, but his mother fluttered about, looking at him with large, upset eyes as she leaned down to take both of his shoulders in her hands. Uncle Lawrence wasn’t dead at all, she explained, in a voice that was worried and tight and angry and understanding all at once. Her voice so intrigued Mycroft that he didn’t think about the rest of what she’d said until much later, when he was lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, and wondering just why Uncle Lawrence had decided to take his secretary Stacey to Spain for the summer.

But before all that, while his mother’s hands were warm on his shoulders, the sky above opened up, and large, cold raindrops began dripping down. Mummy scrambled for her umbrella, a huge black creation that easily covered them both, except that she had trouble getting the catch to work and it was raining in steady sheets by the time she got it sorted. She looked down at him with a smile, her eyes dancing, and he smiled back gamely, trying to ignore the way his jacket clung to his frame, soaked through and heavier than he was used to, or the way his socks squelched inside his shoes. When Mummy changed the subject with a bright, “So what do you want to be when you grow up, Mycroft?”, he knew exactly the answer to offer.

“Dry.”

* * *

When Mycroft was seven, his teacher spent an entire class period discussing various exciting careers. Mycroft sat at his desk quietly as she waxed eloquent about firemen and policemen, doctors and lawyers. He listened to the scientist she brought in, along with the dentist, postman, and pilot. When the class was nearly over, she walked down the rows of desks in the classroom, asking each of them in turn what they wanted to be when they grew up. Mycroft’s classmates offered a boring range of answers they considered heroic. There were to be no garbagemen or handymen from his class, clearly. They all wanted to be astronauts and pilots, firemen and police.

His teacher wound through the sea of desks like a snake, tapping each desk in turn with a ruler, and the last desk she stopped at was front row center, where Mycroft had elected to sit the very first day of class. He was waiting for her, and when the wooden ruler tapped twice on his wooden desktop, he looked up at her, his face all seriousness and determination. “It doesn’t matter,” he informed her, because even at seven, he understood that people changed as they grew up.

“And why doesn’t it matter, Mycroft?” she asked, an odd little smile on her face, and a hesitant sort of amusement in her eyes. She crouched down beside his desk to look at him on equal ground, which Mycroft thought was rather silly, because it made far more sense for her to push for an answer from high ground, where her height could be the slightest bit scary, even if her sweet face made it less so. But she was that sort of teacher, the sort that could be a bit silly and rather fun and nice in a way that was just about the opposite of Aunt Eugenia.

“Because I’m going to be successful. I just haven’t decided at what yet,” he explained, his voice bright and certain. He didn’t really understand why that brought forth a peal of cheerful laughter from her, but she praised him for it, and the praise was nice, if a little unnecessary. Being successful was all there was to it. He couldn’t afford anything less.

* * *

At nine and a half, Mummy took Mycroft out into the garden for a chat one afternoon. As he sat on a stone bench, sheltered by the shade of a large oak tree, Mummy sat beside him and held his hand. “You’re going to be a big brother soon,” she told him, her words making the prospect sound like a treat. She took one of his hands in hers and patted it softly, and Mycroft nodded slowly. He didn’t really understand why she would have another child, but he imagined that Mummy had decided with his father. He didn’t much like his father, but he loved Mummy, so if she had decided that another child was needed, then another child simply must be needed.

“Can you decide what to have?” he asked, sharp eyes peering thoughtfully up at his mother as he debated the news. He was a bit disappointed when she told him ‘no’, because he wanted her to make sure that she had a little girl. Aunt Eugenia liked little girls, and if Mycroft had a sister, then perhaps that would be enough to stop Aunt Eugenia from pinching his cheek. It might even stop her noticing him altogether, and he definitely thought that would be a good thing. So after he and his mother had sat in the shade quietly for a few minutes, he looked up at her seriously.

“Try to have a girl, all the same,” he told her, and hopped off the bench. She really didn’t need to look quite so startled at his insistence. He knew from school that trying was the only way to succeed, after all. Rather than stay and explain this simple idea to Mummy, however, he ran off, because the day was sunny and he’d just remembered that his ball was in the shed. Playing with his ball was more fun than sitting quietly with Mummy.

* * *

By the time Mycroft was twelve, he knew at least one thing he did not want to be when he grew up. He had absolutely no interest in being a big brother. Mummy hadn’t listened to him at all on the subject of a little girl, though Mycroft understood much better now that she truly hadn’t had a choice. Instead, he’d been presented with his little brother, Sherlock, and from day one, Sherlock had been a handful. Where Mycroft was a quiet and studious youth, determined to be a success in the world, Sherlock was a caterwauling brat.

Sherlock screamed through the night, in dizzyingly frustrating intervals, so that Mycroft couldn’t get enough rest to properly pay attention in class. He squealed during homework, cried through Mycroft’s favorite television programmes, and generally made a nuisance of himself. When Mycroft complained to Mummy, she just explained to him that crying and squealing and caterwauling were things that babies did. Mycroft was unimpressed when she said the same thing once Sherlock began toddling about the house and managed to break several things in Mycroft’s room, including the globe that had been Mycroft’s favorite. Mycroft stared down at the shards of blue blocked off by white lines of latitude and longitude and frowned deeply.

The last thing in the world that he wanted to be was a big brother. Definitely.

* * *

“What are you going to be when you grow up, Sherlock?” Mycroft asked, when he was seventeen. He was stretched out on his bed, feet up in the air near his pillow and his head at the foot of the bed, propped up on his arms as he stared down at his textbook. He’d finished revision a half hour ago, but something about the day’s lesson caught his attention, so he was going back over it once more. There was more to be had than simple lines in a history textbook, he was certain of it.

“Why?” Sherlock asked, looking up from where he sat on Mycroft’s floor, something suspicious in his eyes. He dropped his book to the carpet, letting it close with no real interest in preserving his page, and from upside-down, Mycroft read the title: Blackbeard, The Fiercest Pirate of All. As titles went, Mycroft decided that one was rather simple.

“Because tomorrow, Mummy’s having Aunt Eugenia over for tea, and she’s going to pinch your cheek and ask you. It will be better if you have an answer ready for her, especially one she can’t find fault with,” Mycroft advised. Sherlock chafed under the advice, but he considered it all the same, because Mycroft’s advice was generally worth at least a little bit of irritation. Mycroft didn’t really blame him. Sherlock wasn’t like him at all, and Mycroft had decided ages ago that it was because of those differences that he didn’t mind Sherlock being around all that much. Sherlock minded him, though.

“What are you going to tell her?” Sherlock asked, seven-year-old eyes watching Mycroft with crafty intelligence.

“She’s not going to pinch my cheek and ask. People only ask that when you’re little. I’m not little anymore,” Mycroft explained, and his eyes danced as Sherlock leapt up, pacing in explosive fury at the reminder that he was ‘little’. As Sherlock ranted and raved, Mycroft tuned him out with all the experience of a big brother of seven years, returning to his textbook. What he never told Sherlock was that he was debating, in a dark corner in the back of his mind, being a psychiatrist. Minds gone funny would be interesting to use.

* * *

Mycroft knew he had found his calling from the first day he began performing his new duties as a minor official of the government. In short order, he’d started the path to true potential. His mind instinctively understood how politics worked, and what he had to do in order to get ahead. He lost little sleep over the quandary of ethics in politics, ignored the darker nature of backroom dealings as he solidified his hold over the nation.

He never second-guessed himself, because amidst cabinet meetings and policy changes, bureaucracy and diplomacy, Mycroft could navigate the dangerous waters with the ease of a shark, scenting blood like the very best predator, and swooping in to devour the prey. And what he understood best of all was that the real power was not in any visible seat, but instead behind it all, operating from the shadows. 

From the outside looking in, his seven-year-old self had lied, because from the outside looking, Mycroft remained an inconsequential, minor member of the government, his name barely known in the commonwealth. Only Sherlock, of all of those outside, understood the truth, but Mycroft still pretended annoyance when Sherlock announced, at a family dinner, that Mycroft was the British government. The less his family knew, the better.

* * *

At forty-five, Mycroft had discovered the sad truth of his life. For all his preparations, for all his studying and focus, he was not as successful as he had hoped. There were a few problems he could certainly blame on Sherlock, but the fact of the matter was that his own choices had done just as much to damage his life. As he rested in bed on the morning of his birthday, knowing that a few secretaries at work would give him small envelopes with well wishes and possibly even the odd and impersonal gift card, he stared up at the ceiling, remembering the dream from the night before.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Aunt Eugenia, now dead these twenty years, had asked his dream self, and the tiny boy he’d been in the dream had stammered his way through a recitation of exactly what his adult self did. She had pinched his cheek and patted his head, and told him what a clever boy he was, but her smile hadn’t suggested he was clever at all. It had suggested he was stupid, lying to himself about what it was he really wanted.

Settled back amidst fluffy pillows and warm blankets, Mycroft stared upward and nodded to himself, because dead Aunt Eugenia had been right after all. He liked being a minor government official, certainly, but it wasn’t what he wanted anymore. Not precisely, not really.

At the age of forty-five, Mycroft figured out that when he finally properly grew up, what he really wanted to be was loved.

**Author's Note:**

> [Facsimilii](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Facsimilii)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> was kind enough to beta her own giftfic.


End file.
